Trump’s Trade Policy Turns Back The Clock to the Days of Hawley-Smoot

President Donald Trump has long dreamed of turning back the economy’s clock. This week he did just that, announcing a trade policy that will push up the effective tariff rate to its highest level since 1909.

In his speech Wednesday announcing wide-ranging and varying tariffs, Trump said he wanted to return the U.S. economy to how it was in the 1870s and through the turn of the century before the creation of the income tax in 1913. During that time, the government was run on revenue from tariffs.

The tariffs mark a sharp reversal from decades of U.S. trade policy. Since World War II, presidents— including Trump in his first term—generally sought to expand free trade, pursuing agreements to open foreign markets to U.S. exporters and mostly keeping tariffs against foreign goods low.

“We have a 20th-century president in a 21st-century economy who wants to take us back to the 19th century,” Douglas Irwin, a trade economist at Dartmouth, posted on X.

In recent years, Trump and former President Joe Biden have imposed tariffs, but on a much smaller scale and targeted at specific industries. Many economists credit the expansion of free trade with raising living standards in the U.S. and abroad. However, some have cited important downsides, including the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S.

Economists criticized the new tariffs, with many struggling to understand what they were supposed to accomplish. Multiple forecasters have said the tariffs would raise the cost of living while dragging down economic growth, possibly leading to a recession. Meantime, markets have been thrown into chaos.

How Smoot-Hawley Tariffs Smothered the Economy

Amid those projections, some policy analysts have drawn parallels between the protectionist nature of Trump’s policies and that of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.

Much like Trump, the senators who sponsored the act wanted to incentivize the production and purchase of U.S. goods. To do so, they increased already-high tariffs by about 20% despite vehement protests from economists.

The tariff increase kicked off a global trade war in which 25 countries retaliated against the U.S. action and global trade shrunk 66% over five years. Economists said the trade war worsened the severity of the Great Depression.

This week, China was the first to announce retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. Other countries have threatened to respond as well. There is still time for negotiations, and tariffs could end up being lower than previously announced.

However, if the U.S. goes through with tariffs according to plan and countries enter a tit-for-tat trade war, economists expect an even larger chance of a recession.